Ukrainian media outlet says Russia holding one of its journalists captive

Ukrainian media outlet Hromadske alleged on Friday that one of its journalists is being held captive by Russia.

“Our journalist Victoria Roshchyna is held captive by the Russian occupiers. She was reporting from hotspots in Eastern and Southern Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war. On March 12, we couldn’t contact Victoria,” the media outlet tweeted.

“As we learned from witnesses, at that time the journalist was in the temporarily occupied Berdiansk. On March 16, we learned that the day before (probably March 15), Victoria Roshchyna was detained by the Russian FSB. Currently, we do not know where she is,” Hromadske added.

The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv urged Russia to release the journalist and others who the embassy claims have been “illegally detained.”

The development comes as Ukrainian officials have alleged that Russian forces have abducted several mayors and attacked hospitals, a theater, a mosque and a Holocaust memorial site.

Meanwhile, several other journalists have been killed or injured amid the Russian invasion, including Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall, Fox News cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski and Ukrainian journalist Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova, who worked as a freelance consultant for Fox News.

“They are acting worse than Nazis. Because they are killing. They’re throwing bombs at kindergartens. They’re throwing bombs at shelters. Every day we wake up, whoever can sleep at night, but we wake up to another tragic news of civilians lives lost, and this continues persistently,” Yuriy Sak, an adviser to the Ukrainian defense minister, told Greta Van Susteren in an interview to be aired on Sunday.

“This is not just a Ukrainian problem. We are dealing with a deranged regime who is capable of ruining the whole continent and it needs to be stopped,” he later added.